Frederick James Furnivall

Frederick James Furnivall (February 4, 1825 - July 2, 1910), English philologist and editor, was born at Egham, Surrey, the son of a surgeon who made his fortune from running the private lunatic asylum at Great Fosters there.

Frederick Furnivall was one of the three founders and the second editor of the OED. He founded a number of learned societies on early English Literature, and made pioneering and massive editorial contributions, of which the most notable was his parallel text Canterbury Tales. He was one of the founders of and teachers at the London Working Men's College and a lifelong campaigner against what he perceived as injustice. Despite his genius, energy, scholarship and enthusiasm his stint as editor of the OED nearly ended the project: for a dictionary maker he hadan unfortunate lack of patience, discipline and accuracy (Winchester 2003; Peterson 2004).

After an undistinguished mathematics degree at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Lincoln's Inn, he was called to the bar in 1849 and practiced desultorily until 1870. His inheritance was lost in a financial crash in 1867. In the 1850s became involved in various Christian Socialist schemes and his circle included Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin. It was through this group that he became one of the founders of the Working Men's College, and although he later became agnostic he always retained a connection with the College. He conceived of the college as a classless, democratic community of learning. This conviction that 'scholarship could be pursued by quite ordinary people in a spirit of good-humoured enthusiasm', in the words of Peterson (2004), is the key to understanding his later life.

Furnival joined the Philological Society in 1847, and was its Secretary from 1853 almost until his death. From 1861 to 1870 he was the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary until, having lost the sub-editors for A, I, J, N, O, P & W through his irascibility or caprice, he finally resigned.

Furnival indefatigably promoted the study of early English literature. He founded of a series of literary and philological societies: the Early English Text Society (1864), the Chaucer Society, the Ballad Society (1868), the New Shakspere Society (1873), the Browning Society (1881, with Miss Emily Hickey), the Wyclif Society (1882), and the Shelley Society (1885) (DNB). Some of these, notably the Early English Text Society were very successful: all were characterised by extreme controversy of which the most acrimonous was a bitter dispute between Furnivall and Swinburne about the New Shakspere Society.

These societies were primarily textual publishing ventures. Furnivall edited texts for the Early English Text Society, for the Roxburghe Club and the Rolls Series; but his most important labours were devoted to Chaucer. His "Six-Text" edition of the Canterbury Tales was novel in conception and contained full and accurate transcriptions. Modern scholars disagree about his merits as an editor. His work, and that of the amateurs he recruited, was often slapdash, but it was substantial, and it laid the foundation for all subsequent editions. He was one of a small group of Victorian scholars who can bee created with establishing academic study of English literature.

Furnivall was always an enthusiastic oarsman, and till the end kept up his interest in rowing; with John Beesley in 1845 be introduced the new type of narrow sculling boat, and in 1886 started races on the Thames for sculling fours and sculling eights. In 1896 Furnivall founded the Hammersmith Sculling Club, initially for working-class girls, and 'entered into its activities with his usual boyish enthusiasm, for it brought together two of his favourite activities: vigorous outdoor exercise and enjoyment of the company of young women' (Peterson 2004). In 1862 Furnivall married Eleanor Nickel Dalziel (1838?–1937), who Winchester (2003) describes as a lady's maid although this transgressive social status is disputed by the DNB entry. When he was 58, he left her and their one surviving son for a 21 year old secretary named Teena Rochfort-Smith. Two months after his formal separation from Eleanor, Teena Rochfort-Smith was immolated whilst failing to burn correspondence in Goole.

References

• Peterson, William S.. “Furnivall, Frederick James (1825-1910).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33298 (accessed January 26, 2005).

• Winchester, Simon. "The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary". Oxford: OUP, 2003.

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